The DPR/LPR "referendum" is the next major lie Russia will tell
Mass "evacuations" are the current one
The news of this so-called referendum that is about to happen in the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic is a lie before the entire world that we're seeing about to be told.
It's very likely about to be told on Meta platforms - in fact, on sanctioned entity Denis Pushilin's Instagram.
See that? That's the leader of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic. He's been a sanctioned individual since 2015, which means that any U.S. person who contracts with him or provides him services is in violation of Federal law.
And there he is, right on Instagram in front of Jesus and everybody.
Historically, these referendums he's talking about are lies. As RFE/RL notes:
"After seizing Crimea in 2014, the Kremlin immediately pushed through a "referendum" on joining Russia. Though Moscow claims citizens overwhelmingly voted in favor of annexation, a leaked report from its Human Rights Council two months later put turnout at only 30 percent, with about half of those voting to join Russia."
And if they don't get the numbers they need, then they'll just outright lie about it, like they did in Belarus in August of 2020.
Indeed, the very existence of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics are lies told through Meta platforms.
Remember, these separatist provinces are "countries" without international recognition, control over their own territory, substantial exports or imports, UN membership, or for that matter much of a government or an army without Russian support.
The only real existence they have on the Internet is basically a bunch of rando Ukrainian militants play-acting at being a nation-state on social media.
In fact, they exploit social networks like Instagram, Tiktok and Facebook to make their pseudo-movement look legitimate and popular. They use its addictive mechanisms - the "like", the share, the positive comment - to spread and entrench their nonsensical militant ideologies. They make radicalization addictive, because the platforms we are on are addictive by design.
These same social networks - like the ones we are on, right now, as in Facebook and Instagram themselves - are carrying, right now, even more separatists who are lying about "evacuating" 140,000 people from Mariupol... to pro-Russian territories in Donetsk, or to Russia itself. If you "like" and "follow" the right pages on Facebook, you can even see the lies being told right next to your Facebook ads for crypto scams and lawn furniture.
Think about what a bald-faced lie that is for a second: Russia are the ones who are bombarding Mariupol and sending Chechens to terrorize its inhabitants.
If you're forcibly taking people from a city you're bombarding and bringing them into your country, the English word for that isn't "evacuation", it's "abduction".
That is the lie that is being told.
And the supposed "referendum" is going to be the next one, that's what Russia and separatist "governments" are telegraphing.
If we take at full credence Voltaire's dicta about people who can make you believe absurdities, and people who can make you commit atrocities... what does that make Meta, then, as a platform and enabler, first for these absurdities, and then for perpetrators of the atrocities that follow?